Ultrasound is an increasingly common tool for viewing the internal body matter, such as organs or tissue, of a patient in real time. In an ultrasonic imaging system, acoustic signals having frequencies in the range of 2.gtoreq.20 MHz are transmitted from a transducer into the patient. A portion of the acoustic signals are reflected by the body matter to create echoes that are received and interpreted to produce an image of the patient's body.
In practice, the transducer is in contact with the patient's body and moved around in order to locate a particular point of interest. Images are acquired both while the transducer is stationary and while the transducer is moving. When the transducer remains stationary while scanning, measurements made in accordance with the displayed image frames, for example the length of a segment, are substantially accurate. However, when a transducer moves while scanning, each image frame appears distorted. The image appears either slightly shrunk or stretched laterally, and thus, the measured length of a segment in such an image is either less than or greater than the actual length. As a result, a physician's ability to produce accurate diagnoses of the patient being scanned may be affected by either the inaccurate image display or the inaccurate measurements taken from the image.
Therefore, there is a need for an ultrasonic imaging system that produces images with signals received from a moving transducer that more accurately depict the patient's body.